Law Abiding Citizen - Released 16th October 2009
Explosive Thriller starring Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler
Oct 14, 2009
The latest thriller from F. Gary Gray is as tense as a tightrope walker’s buttocks. Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler star in this month’s most exciting prospect. Vigilante vengeance meets race-against-time intrigue with the tagline “A man who loses everything is capable of anything.”
Plot Synopsis for Law Abiding Citizen
Family man Clyde Shelton (Butler) opens the door one evening to two killers who murder his wife and daughter. Lawyer, Nick Rice (Foxx) makes a deal to shorten one killer’s sentence, in exchange for information about his partner. Shelton masterminds a plot to seek vengeance on the injustice of the entire legal system. First he kills the man who murdered his daughter and, having been arrested, he carries out the rest of his plan from behind bars. Shelton orchestrates a series of unpredictable assassinations of key figures in the trial before setting his sights on Rice's family.
Exploring the question of whether "some justice is better than no justice at all" and playing with the audience's sympathies, the movie is a roller coaster of changing allegiances and recognition of guilt. Law Abiding Citizen proves to be an emotional battle of wits and tense power play between the two stars.
Worth a Watch?
Jamie Foxx rarely makes disappointing appearances in films, with Miami Vice about coming closest to being a letdown. He has been popular at the box office since co-starring with Tom Cruise in Collateral, followed up the year after by his stunning performance in Ray. Gerard Butler has see-sawed from Graphic Novel Epic, 300, to Romantic comedy P.S. I Love You and now finds himself back on the action side of the fence. The combination is exhilerating, with gripping dialogue between the two stars. Originally it was Foxx cast as the sociopathic Shelton and Butler whose job would be to put an end to the vengeance, but, as a sign of the two actors' incredible versatility even more, the two swapped roles when filming began.
Director, F. Gary Gray, has worked with Samuel L. Jackson and Kevin Spacey in The Negotiator (1998) and returns to the action thriller after Hollywood-based comedy Be Cool, starring Uma Thurman and John Travolta. While The Negotiator explores the similar theme of violent protest against corruption in the justice system, Law Abiding Citizen is a grittier and more brutal exacting of vengeance, forcing the law, and Rice himself, to face up to their crimes.
Accompanied by an excellent score by Brian Tyler (Constantine) and also starring Leslie Bibb (Iron Man, Confessions of a Shopaholic), Bruce McGill (Obsessed, Vantage Point, Runaway Jury) and Viola Davies (Doubt), Law Abiding Citizen comes with plenty of promise and explosions.
